The Beatles' management said Thursday that a Beatles version of the Rock Band video game will debut in September. In addition, they'll sell accompanying instruments modeled after the ones used by the band.

The release of Madden NFL 09 on Aug. 12 unofficially marks the beginning of the fall game season. But July is a good time to catch up on some of the games you may have missed. Here are the best of 2008 so far.

Tapping on fake instruments and screeching into microphones connected to video game consoles has become lucrative for both the music and gaming industries. Downloadable tunes for music-based games "Guitar Hero," "Rock Band" and "SingStar" have become as vital as iTunes itself -- and one of the last ways to expose youngsters to classic rock.

The success of the video game Rock Band is drumming up revenue for the music industry. Virtual rockers downloaded roughly 2.5 million songs in the eight weeks since the game launched on the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 systems.